After saving the Empress, I became the top scholar in the imperial examination.

Outside the window, frogs croaked incessantly, their calls rising and falling, while insects chirped no less, their "squeak squeak squeak" vying for the rhythm... The sounds were noisy and chaotic, yet not at all annoying; instead, they possessed the vibrant atmosphere that a summer night should have.

Zhu Cuiwei pursed her pink lips and looked at the young man in front of her with her dark jade-like eyes.

The young man slumped his shoulders, his eyes seemingly filled with disbelief. After taking a deep breath, he stubbornly forced out, "Go to sleep early," and turned to walk towards the door... Her eyes curved slightly.

"Close the door," she said calmly.

The other person paused, without turning around, and with his hand reversed, reached out his fingers to grab the door latch, pulled hard, and a strong wind blew into the room, but just as the wooden door was about to reach the edge, he wisely reduced his strength and gently closed the door.

"Hmph." She snorted.

He dragged over a bamboo chair, sat down leisurely at the desk, picked up a book from the other person's desk, and started eating snacks while turning the pages.

"It tastes pretty good." She smiled and wiped the crumbs of pastry from her lips with her finger.

...

...

The next morning.

A mist floated in the air, dampening the sleepy eyes of passersby. A gust of cold wind blew, moistening their eyes, and gradually lifting their spirits.

Ning Nan and the three coachmen went in and out of the courtyard, starting to unload the things from the carriage.

The first carriage carried snacks and several bolts of silk that I had bought. My mother held the seemingly expensive green silk, touched it, and exclaimed "Oh!" a few times. She happily said that she also needed to buy a few red ones.

Ning Nan said it was already set, but he was a little helpless because the wedding date was set too close to the date; they would be getting married on the 28th of this month.

Last night, after leaving Cui Cui's room, I gritted my teeth and ran out to ask a young woman who worked in Han Ge Zhuang to make a wedding dress and the groom's clothes that I should wear.

I also ordered a wedding dress for my mother-in-law to wear at the wedding banquet. The supplier came to take her measurements in the afternoon. My mother slapped her forehead and said that she should have ordered it a few days ago. After feeling annoyed, she smiled and praised, "My son is so thoughtful."

As the three drivers worked, they smiled and congratulated the mother and son. The old woman smiled back and called out, "Meat for breakfast, I just went and bought two pounds."

Ning Nan carried two rather heavy boxes off the first carriage.

One was a gift from Ning Beizhi, and the other was a gift from Shangguan Xiuxiu; each box contained one hundred gold coins.

The gap between the rich and the poor these days is astonishingly large. "Behind the red gates, meat and wine go to waste, while on the road, the frozen dead lie scattered on the ground..." This poem wasn't just something Du Fu made up out of hatred for the rich; it's a widespread and enduring reality that has persisted for thousands of years.

Old Ning's family has twelve mu of land, and one mu can yield nearly one shi and nine shi of grain. The market price is one thousand wen per shi of grain.

Silver was cheap back then, but one tael of silver was worth seven or eight hundred coins. In other words, relying solely on growing grain, the Ning family could only earn less than thirty taels of silver a year.

This doesn't even include land tax, corvée labor, miscellaneous taxes, and some inexplicable surcharges. If you include all of these, the maximum you can earn in a year is twenty taels of silver. Add to that the food and drink for the two of you and the new clothes for the New Year, and you'll be lucky to have five taels left over at the end of the year.

But the young masters and ladies of wealthy families could casually spend a hundred gold coins... a whole thousand taels of silver.

Fortunately, they attacked me... Ning Nan could only console himself with this thought.

Cui Cui got up and went to make breakfast for her mother. He opened the door and placed two hundred gold coins under the wardrobe in Cui Cui's room.

I can't tell the two women in my family about this money, otherwise it will be hard to explain.

The sulfur, coal, saltpeter, and other materials from the second carriage were moved to the courtyard and covered with burlap; they will be dealt with later.

The most troublesome thing was the third carriage, which was filled with boxes containing many letters, stationery, handkerchiefs, fabrics, and other miscellaneous items sent by courtesans. The boxes were filled with fragrance, and he even suspected that there were undergarments inside.

"Uncle Jiang, please take these back to your seventh young master and tell him they're all for him." Ning Nan gritted his teeth and sighed to the driver of the third carriage.

Miss Cui knows martial arts... Unless the other party explicitly states, "This marriage is just a game, you can go play your own game," he felt it was inappropriate to challenge her authority.

At exactly 7 a.m., Li Xing rushed to his house, shouting that a theatrical troupe had come to the village and the stage was already set up!

The opera troupe is going to perform a few plays in the village and stay there for a while. They said they plan to put on a new play and then go to Nanjing to make a big splash.

The villagers naturally welcomed them. The old woman helped Cuicui up, and the two planned to go to the opera with Xingge. Xingge called Cuicui "sister-in-law," and Cuicui gave him a box of pastries.

Ning Nan naturally knew that this was Old Xu's arrangement. He muttered a few words, saying that Master Zhu's subordinates were not very capable, but they were quite efficient in their work.

As the hour of Chen (7-9 AM) was about to pass, Dahei and Sanzhuang each dragged a cart to the door, with Erlaizi following behind, his waist slightly bulging, concealing two knives.

The brilliant sunlight shone into the Ning family's courtyard, and the tips of the weeds on the ground gleamed with dazzling light.

Ning Nan invited the group to sit down in the main room and brewed tea for them.

"Brother, something seems off." Er Laizi took the tea with both hands, his pockmarked face trembling as he frowned.

Big Black was a robust and honest-looking man, like a bear, but his face and tone were very calm: "Some outsiders have come into the village, but they don't seem to be very professional."

The word "professional" was taught to him by his older brother, and it's very fitting here.

Blacksmithing is their profession, butchering pigs is Erlai's profession, so what is this group's profession... bandits? Or ambushing government troops?

But even as mountain bandits, they weren't very professional.

Ning Nan smiled and said, "Very unprofessional."

And a bit of a show-off.

A theatrical troupe, tsk.

After all, it was the first time I met Old Man Xu yesterday, so I felt embarrassed to say directly that his team wasn't very good. The hooks were too straight, and while they weren't catching any fish, they might also be taken advantage of by others.

If he were a bandit, he would laugh himself to death at the sight of this scene. "I heard there's a theatrical troupe here, so we've come to watch the show." A bandit could easily say that and infiltrate Li Family Village, where all sorts of people would soon gather... He picked up his teacup, took a sip of tea, and tapped his fingers lightly on the edge of the table.

Considering that I need to help Master Zhu overthrow Black Tiger Stronghold and find the mastermind behind it all for the sake of household registration, this great achievement is not easy to accomplish, and I'm afraid I'll really have to deal with these people again afterward... Sometimes, even a bad teammate can be useful.

San Zhuang didn't care about all that. Ning Nan pointed to the place in the main room where the pastries were piled up, and the guy scurried over and grabbed a box, chuckling, "Big brother, I thought you were hiding these goodies to treat everyone when you got married to sister-in-law!"

"Eat up," Ning Nan waved his hand.

He always has a backup plan; it's impossible for him to honestly farm for the rest of his life.

Obtaining household registration and passing the imperial examination was the best way to improve one's life, but if that didn't work, one could only go up the mountain.

Farming in the village means that if there's a natural disaster or man-made calamity, such as an elderly mother falling seriously ill, or a flood, drought, or locust plague, one has to sell the land or borrow money at exorbitant interest rates to get through the crisis. If the loan sharks can't be repaid, the land will eventually have to be sold anyway.

In this way, the land would naturally concentrate in the hands of landlords like Master Li.

In a fragile small-scale peasant economy, such land consolidation was a natural occurrence. It had nothing to do with good or evil, nor with the landlords themselves; if there hadn't been a landlord like Master Li, there would have been a landlord like Master Wang—it was all the same.

Land always eventually concentrates in the hands of a few, until the majority can no longer survive, thus initiating a new round of chaotic reshuffling.

Moreover, although it is a time of peace now, the people of the Southern Dynasty all know that the Northern Dynasty will move south sooner or later. Once they are conscripted for labor by the government, it will be no different from death.

While we and our brothers are still young, we should prepare for the worst... Regardless of whether we rebel or not, we should at least make some contributions that would earn us the right to be granted amnesty.

Ning Nan finished the bowl of tea in his hand.

After finishing his tea, he asked Dahei and Sanzhuang to move the things in the yard onto a cart and take them to the back mountain.

He took the sharpened knife from Erlai, wrapped it up, and tucked it into his lower back.

They took Erlai to the east side of the village to see Xu Qing, an old man who was staying at Uncle Sanjin's house.

Li Sanjin's home was not far from the home of the student. It was a large courtyard with five rooms. Since Sanjin's parents passed away, one of the rooms had been left empty and was often rented out to passing merchants to stay for a few copper coins.

"Young Master Ning, your request..." Old Man Xu lowered his eyes, considered for a moment, and then said frankly, "This old man cannot make that decision."

Ning Nan sat opposite the old man and said with a smile, "No rush, Manager Xu can talk to your master first."

Old Xu gave a wry smile. "Young Master Ning, the steward Qin, who is officially appointed by Master Zhu, will be arriving soon. I am merely his deputy."

"So, my request needs to be made through Steward Qin first?" Ning Nan frowned.

Before Old Xu could answer, the sound of clattering hooves and the creaking of a woman pulling on the reins rang out from Sanjin's courtyard.

Ning Nan's ears twitched, and he turned around to look. His pupils shrank slightly, and his expression was somewhat astonished... It was a white horse, and it seemed to be a rather familiar white horse.